creepy poem

Continuing the fifth set of artworks for assessment to the London Art College's correspondence course D6 Illustrating Children's Books:

Of the set, the second part is a much bigger project, which was also exercise in black and white work, to be inspired by the text of a creepy poem.

The brief went something like this:

The image should be suitable for 5-7 year olds. Make it portrait orientation. ​The given poem should be in the centre, with the illustration forming a border around it. Give it a white border, no bleed, and use 18cm wide and 25cm tall, with the poem to sit in an area of 8cm wide and 14cm tall. Balancing the black and white is important, as is creating a creepy feeling. Use the images evoked by the text, but don't be limited to them.

The first part was getting the layout right, and that meant using InDesign and doing some research on how to display a poem where the first line is also the title. Accordingly the first line was in bold with a stanza-sized gap to the second line. 

Then I needed to try out some ideas for the illustrated border. So I printed out a few templates and started sketching. With the first one I tried for a Phantom of the Opera style character, but ditched that idea.

The outer parallel line shows the trimmed paper size and the inner parallel line shows the white border.

The next sketch developed the grim reaper and the moon further. 

Too many bats didn't create enough interest, so I looked into ghostly options and refined the witch a bit.

Now to get out the good paper and begin:

This is how it looked around halfway through. Again I needed to use nib ink to get the black as consistent as possible.

And here's what the illustration border looked like before it got cleaned up in Photoshop: 

​Getting the balance of white and black required more work on the stars at the top of the page.

And what it looked like after the Photoshop work:

I've added a hairline border using the blog tools, so that you can see that there is a few mm of white border between the illustration and edge of the trimmed page. It is easiest to see under the boy and beside the grim reaper.

And now to add in the pre-prepared text, without the spelling mistakes.

The thin white border is still there, it is just hard to see on a white background.

Creepy work like this rarely features in my visual diary! With Unit 5 done, it is time to start working on the 6th and final set of projects for this course.